One Foot in the Grave

He snorted. “We’ll see.”

  After he was gone, I made the invite to dinner, then listened for five minutes as Don argued about the men leaving the compound with Max on the loose.

  “Two vamps and a ghoul, Don, plus me. Who’s gonna take that on? It’s only dinner, for God’s sake. I swear they’re not on the menu. They may as well meet one of the people they’ll be trusting their lives to.”

  He finally gave the phone to Tate and relayed the offer. Tate accepted at once. He wanted to check out every deadhead he could, as he so nicely put it. There was no food in the house and not enough time to cook, so I showered and went to the kitchen to find the phone book. Rodney would be shit out of luck, because no delivery place I saw advertised raw meat or body parts. I settled on Italian, and ordered different dishes for everyone. Delivery would be in an hour, right about when they’d arrive.

  Annette glided into the room twenty minutes later, dressed in a long, flowing skirt with a pale peach top. She looked like a million bucks, but as soon as I felt her vibe, I knew she was itching for trouble.

  “Well, my dear, you must be feeling quite smug after that scene in the car, but let me remind you that I have been with Crispin for over two hundred years, and I will last the next two hundred. You, on the other hand, will astonish me if you last out the month.”

  I shut the Yellow Pages with a bang. Oh, so the gloves were off, were they?

  “I can see why you feel threatened, Annette. When the person you love falls in love with someone else, that’s a real bad day, isn’t it? Look, I’m willing to overlook your previous relationship and be friendly, but piss me off and you’ll regret it.”

  She smiled, a nasty little curl of the lips. “You silly girl, I’ve weathered thousands of dreamers like you. Tens of thousands, as it were. Crispin always comes back to me, and do you know why? Because I give him what he really wants. He didn’t mention the rest of the story about his birthday years ago, did he? It wasn’t just the three of us—it was the five of us. Two human girls plus Belinda and I, all shagging together. I picked the humans out myself. Crispin just adores warm living flesh, and besides, we had to eat something. Well, something else, that is.”

  Motherfucker. Annette chuckled at my livid expression, her goal scored. “Oh, my sweet, I can’t count all of the times there were at least two of us with him. Crispin’s so bloody insatiable. He always was, even as a human. And you’re not that sacred to him, darling. Did he tell you about the two of us just a couple months ago? You’re nothing more to him than a mere bump in a long, winding road. Best you realize that now.”

  A couple months ago. So she was the “almost” from Chicago. My knuckles went white on the table.

  “In fact Bones did tell me about that, Annette, but you didn’t get your usual service, did you? Bones told me he gave you a tongue lashing and then left you high and dry. That must have stung a bit, hmm? All fired up and no cock to ride?” If she wanted to play dirty, I was ready to roll. Let’s see who got covered in the most sludge.

  Both impeccably plucked brows arched. “You haven’t had much experience with men, have you? He might have left me high, but it was in no ways dry. Crispin can do more with his mouth than most men can accomplish with their entire bodies. I was well satisfied, I assure you, before he left. Not what I would have preferred, certainly, but vampires are a patient lot. He’ll be back, and I’ll be waiting.”

  That was it. “Do you know what you’ve done?” I asked in a bland tone. Annette gave me an inquiring look. “You’ve gotten on my last nerve.”

  The table went crashing into her before she could blink, and then my fist found a home in her perfectly arranged hair. She sprawled on the tile floor before leaping up with nosferatu quickness. My cat decided to run up the stairs, apparently not interested in who won this battle.

  “Fast little child, aren’t you?” Annette mocked. “You’d have to be, to still be alive. Oh dear, did I upset you? Listening to you two in bed earlier almost lulled me to sleep. I’ve never heard Crispin sound so bored.”

  “I am going to knock the slut out of you, Annette,” I gritted between clenched teeth. “And that should take some doing, you uppity English tramp!”

  “I am not so easily—oof!”

  The chair cracked over her head, smashing into pieces, and then I threw her bodily into the next room. She wasn’t a shrinking violet, however. Annette came at me with her eyes lit up and her fangs pointed, splinters decorating her from the ruined dinette chair. Instead of waiting for her to make a move, I charged and knocked her to the floor. She snapped her jaws with purpose, but I held her by the neck, landing brutal blows with my legs and free fist. We rolled around on the floor in a blur of limbs, but the bitch never stopped speaking the whole time.

  “You’ve never had him the way I have, you puritan baby. Leaving Crispin was the cleverest thing you could have done, because it only inflamed his interest. He’d have tossed you away long ago if you hadn’t. I can’t imagine why he endures the monotony of shagging you at all, since you couldn’t handle him without his leash on. Oh, and Crispin telling you he loves you? I’ve heard that from him a thousand times as well, but in my case, time has borne the truth of it. You may as well pack up and leave now; you’re already through.”

  I bashed her head into the floor to shut her up, smiling when I heard a crack as something fractured. Annette was strong, but not strong enough. I jabbed my knee into her spine until it snapped. She howled as her body bent at a wrong angle. While she was temporarily immobilized, I dashed up the stairs to the bedroom, grabbing a curved silver knife.

  Annette was still on the floor when I ran back down, and a bark of grim amusement escaped me.

  “By God, you think I’d fall for that? The first thing Bones taught me was to kick someone when they were down.”

  I drew back my foot to slam it into her ribs when she moved faster than I’d given her credit for, sweeping my other leg out from under me.

  “I know that, you insolent half-breed, but you clearly didn’t listen to him instruct how to block it!”

  Back on the carpet we rolled, furniture flying in our wake. For a solid ten minutes, we grappled with each other. Annette scored several blows, but in the end, I plunged that silver blade through her chest.

  She froze. Her eyes went from emerald back to champagne at once, and a single ragged breath escaped her.

  “At least you lived up to your billing, but you missed. Not close enough.”

  I straddled her, holding the knife still. “I didn’t miss, bitch. One flick of my wrist and you’re a bad memory and an even worse smell. I think we need to have a little talk, woman to skank. I know why you’re doing this. You want me to leave him again, but I can save you the oxygen in your words, because it won’t happen. Bones forgave me for deserting him and running off for years, so you can bet your overused, group-orgy twat that I will forgive him for one bad mouthful of you. Now, are we very clear on that?”

  Annette glared up at me with pain in her expression. That silver hurt, I knew from experience. “You don’t deserve him.”

  I almost laughed. “You’re right. That’s his issue, though, not yours. Here’s your issue—are you going to accept things the way they are, or are you exiting his life? See, I’m not plugging your ticker now because Bones really does care for you. Poor bastard doesn’t have any sense when it comes to women, does he? If you can handle being around him in a platonic way, I’ll deal with not slicing up your heart even though I really, really want to. What do you say? Do we have a deal?”

  Suddenly her eyes widened in alarm. “Do get off, he’s almost here! Faith, he’ll be so cross with me!”

  In wonder I blinked down at her. Here I sat with a knife in her chest, and she was more worried about a berating from Bones? Her priorities were way out of whack.

  “Deal?” I persisted.

  She shot me an annoyed glance. “Heavens yes, now let me up! I have to put the house to right. Blast it, he just sped up!”

 
I rolled my eyes and carefully took the knife from her chest. She sprang up at once, but not in hostility. On the contrary, she became a blur of cleaning motion, like Martha Stewart on crack cocaine.

  The car door slammed a moment later, and then the front door flung open. Bones glared at Annette with an expression so infuriated, I actually pitied her.

  “And that, Annette, is called Pilates,” I said, giving an exaggerated stretch.

  “Very entertaining,” she hastened to agree, turning blameless eyes to him. “Why, Crispin, you’re back early—”

  “Save it,” he cut her off. With a raised brow, he went to me, reached inside the back of my pants, and withdrew the bloody knife I’d hastily shoved there. He then prowled over to Annette and dangled it in front of her stricken face.

  “Unless Pilates has become downright lethal, I’d say the two of you were fighting. Fighting so loudly, in fact, that I could hear you miles away.”

  There was simmering menace in his tone. The tension thickened. Behind him, a face peeked in the doorway.

  “Rodney!”

  I threw my arms around the surprised ghoul, who looked like he hadn’t expected such a warm welcome. Tate, Juan, and Cooper hung back by the car, but I waved them in. Anything to defuse the ticking bomb of a scene I didn’t want to get into. At the same time, another vehicle pulled up in the driveway with an Italian logo on its door.

  “Look.” Broad, false smile. “The food’s here! Who’s hungry?”

  THIRTY-ONE

  ANNETTE POLITELY EXCUSED HERSELF TO change clothes, and I did the same. Rodney picked up the broken fixtures without comment while Bones followed me into the bedroom.

  “Not now,” I began before he opened his mouth. “We settled it. The guys are here and so is dinner. Let’s sit down on whatever furniture is left and eat. The rest can wait.”

  His lips thinned. “All right. But this isn’t settled. You’re still seething mad, I can smell it, and we’re dealing with this after supper.”

  Bones threw his coat on the bed and then gave one last parting comment over his shoulder as he left.

  “Best put on something with sleeves; your arms are covered in scratches.”

  Dinner was an exercise in endurance. Annette was effortlessly charming with my three men. No awkward chagrin for her. Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, but then again, she was room temperature. Juan flirted with her outrageously, and she even got a few smiles out of Tate. Bones, meanwhile, sat and brooded with a quietness that bordered on rudeness.

  I engaged Rodney in conversation and tried to ignore those brown eyes burning into my side. Was Bones angry that I’d stabbed Annette? God, she was still talking and taking up space! Furthermore, in spite of my denials, what she’d said was festering. Multiple women at once. Warm living flesh. Tens of thousands.

  Was it true? Sure, I knew Bones hadn’t been a monk before me—duh, former gigolo, so I’d expected some promiscuity—but that kind of history staggered me. Yes, I’d known there would be exes. Probably a lot of exes, but I hadn’t expected that the notches on Bones’s belt would have a similar number to the miles on my car’s odometer! Just thinking about it made me want to kill him and crawl into an insecure ball at the same time. When the plates were finally cleared away, I was a mass of conflicted emotions.

  “Cards, gentlemen?” Annette asked. She pulled out a deck from one of her many bags and shuffled them with practiced hands. Tate and Juan’s eyes gleamed. There were few things they loved more than a good game of poker.

  Bones stood at once. “Not for the two of us. Enjoy your game, Annette, by all means. Then you can take her friends back. Rodney will accompany you and show you the way. After that, your luck will have run out.”

  The four men weren’t fools. Everyone knew there had been a brawl, and it was an easy guess as to what it was about. Hell, Rodney had probably heard it also. He gave a sympathetic glance at Annette.

  “That was hardly polite,” I hissed as we went upstairs, Bones shutting the bedroom door behind us. “You may as well leave it open; they can still hear us.”

  “Anyone ill-mannered enough to eavesdrop when they can choose to ignore us listens at their own peril,” Bones replied in clear warning to those below. He leaned back against the door. “Dinner was a waste of time; you barely ate. Now, tell me what happened.”

  Frankly I was trying to forget, because maggots of doubt were worming inside me. No wonder I’d had no appetite.

  “A catfight, no pun intended. Annette said some nasty things and so did I, and then I stabbed her to make a point. Now that was a pun.”

  Bones wasn’t amused. “So that’s it, then? All’s well and no hard feelings?”

  I nodded without conviction.

  He moved suddenly, just inches away in a blink. When he lowered his head to kiss me, I flinched.

  He straightened. “Right. There are two ways I’m going to hear every blasted word Annette said to you. One is from you by request. The other is after I beat it out of her. Now, the selfish part of me hopes you’ll stay silent, but then that would defeat the greater good. You can tell me anything, Kitten, as I’ve often said. Anything at all. The question is, will you?”

  There was a quarter of a bottle of gin on the nightstand. I sat on the bed and drained it before replying.

  “Fine. Here goes. Annette said you were basically a raging pervert who liked your women in minimums of twos, humans especially because of their warm bodies, you’ve fucked more women than the population of this state, I’d never hold your interest…” I paused to take another breath. “You sounded bored in bed with me earlier, I’d never be able to handle what you really liked to do, you tell half the women you fuck that you’re in love with them, you’d have tossed me out years ago if I hadn’t left you first…oh, and that she was the one you munched on a couple months ago.”

  “I am going to flog Annette fleshless for this.” Bones’s voice was low and furious. “If I were you, I’d have killed her. Bloody hell.”

  He snatched open the door. “Rodney, take them back and leave Annette here!”

  He didn’t bother waiting for a response before slamming it closed again. I heard Rodney’s mumbled acceptance and then the sounds of them leaving.

  “Is it true?” I asked. “You’re pissed at her, but is that because she lied to me? Or because she told me the truth?”

  His eyes closed for a second. “I’m sorry to be having this conversation under these circumstances, Kitten, but I had no intention of concealing my past from you. The short answer to what Annette told you is yes, I have been with many women. Many. Human and otherwise.”

  Many. Again, that wasn’t unexpected considering his age, former profession, and drop-dead gorgeous—literally!—looks. But I needed a little more clarification than the word many.

  “Usually in bunches? Thousands? Tens of thousands?”

  Bones came to the bed and knelt next to where I sat.

  “Let me explain how I was after I was changed into a vampire. For a few years, I brooded over the fate Ian forced on me, but eventually I figured I may as well have a grand time being dead. Back then I had a talent for exactly one thing, and that was shagging. If the girl fancied feminine company also while we were in bed, I certainly didn’t object. Then as the years passed, I began meting out death to those I thought deserved it. Later I started making an income from it. Soon killing became the other thing I excelled at, and between the two, I thought I was as happy as I had any right to be.

  “My life went on like this, and yes, Annette was frequently one of the women I shagged, either alone or accompanied. Then one day a friend of mine asked me to find his daughter’s murderer, and I traced her killer and his operation to a bar in Ohio. There I met you, and I fell in love. You can’t imagine what that was like after centuries of…emptiness. I hadn’t thought I was capable of falling in love, but at last I felt like I had something to give other than a good shag or killing a bloke for someone. And now my trusted friend Annette has sough
t to rip that away from me by taunting you with things in my past, hoping it would destroy your feelings for me.”

  We had never discussed how Bones became a hit man, or very much at all about his early years. Despite our months together, I realized we’d spent most of our time chasing the bad guys and very little time talking about who we were, or who we had been. It wasn’t hard to imagine the type of life Bones had described, either. I couldn’t relate to all the sex, but for the past four and a half years, I’d had little to offer people but my ability to kill as well. And at the end of the day, that was a very lonely feeling.

  “Don’t judge her so harshly, Bones. Annette loves you; that’s why she did what she did. I don’t like your extensive sexual history, but I can handle it—if it’s in your past. But I will never participate in a threesome, foursome, fivesome, whatever. If that’s what you’re hoping I’ll eventually get into…then we have a problem.”

  “Except for that one instance I truly regret with Annette, I didn’t touch another woman while we were apart, because I don’t want anyone but you. And as far as telling other women I loved them, when I was a whore, I used to tell all my clients I loved them. Almost part of the job, as it were. That’s why I’d said it before to Annette, but not since I was human have I said it to anyone but you.”

  The truth was in his eyes, and it took the sting out of discovering everything, and everyone, that had come before me.

  “Well, then…okay.”

  “Okay?” Bones pulled me onto the floor with him until our faces were level.

  “Yeah,” I said softly, touching his face. “Okay.”

  When he kissed me this time, I didn’t flinch. I coiled myself around him.

  Bones drew back after a long moment. “I still have to deal with Annette. You might look leniently on her, but she violated my trust, and I cannot dismiss that. Annette!” he suddenly called out. “Get up here!”

  I shrugged, an idea I normally wouldn’t have considered threading its way into my head.

  “Do it your way, but I suggest another one. You could go ahead and beat her bloody, or…you could give me such loud, screaming orgasms that the sound of them blisters her ears. If you have any former-whore-turned-promiscuous-vampire tricks you’ve been holding back, well, bring them on. I only have one stipulation: You’d better outperform any service you gave to her or anyone else, because if I don’t wake up tomorrow red in the face from embarrassment at what you did to me, I’ll be disappointed.”